Isaac Asimov - Foundation's Edge

And the First Speaker said, “By Seldon, you may be right. But how will we ever convince the Table of this?”

“First Speaker, you underestimate your eminence.”

Trevize was hot and annoyed. He and Pelorat were sitting in the small dining area, having just completed their midday meal.

Pelorat said, “We’ve only been in space two days and I find myself quite comfortable, although I miss fresh air, nature, and all that. Strange! Never seemed to notice all that sort of thing when it was all around me. Still between my wafer and that remarkable computer of yours, I have my entire library with me—or all that matters, at any rate. And I don’t feel the least bit frightened of being out in space now. Astonishing!”

Trevize made a noncommittal sound. His eyes were inwardly focused.

Pelorat said gently, “I don’t mean to intrude, Golan, but I don’t really think you’re listening. Not that I’m a particularly interesting person—always been a bit of a bore, you know. Still, you seem preoccupied in another way. —Are we in trouble? Needn’t be afraid to tell me, you know. Not much I could do, I suppose, but I won’t go into panic, dear fellow.”

“In trouble?” Trevize seemed to come to his senses, frowning slightly.

“I mean the ship. It’s a new model, so I suppose there could be something wrong.” Pelorat allowed himself a small, uncertain smile.

Trevize shook his head vigorously. “Stupid of me to leave you in such uncertainty, Janov. There’s nothing wrong at all with the ship. It’s working perfectly. It’s just that I’ve been looking for a hyper-relay.”

“Ah, I see. —Except that I don’t. What is a hyper-relay?”

“Well, let me explain, Janov. I am in communication with Terminus. At least, I can be anytime I wish and Terminus can, in reverse, be in communication with us. They know the ship’s location, having observed its trajectory. Even if they had not, they could locate us by scanning nearspace for mass, which would warn them of the presence of a ship or, possibly, a meteoroid. But they could further detect an energy pattern, which would not only distinguish a ship from a meteoroid but would identify a particular ship, for no two ships make use of energy in quite the same way. In some way, our pattern remains characteristic, no matter what appliances or instruments we turn on and off. The ship may be unknown, of course, but if it is a ship whose energy pattern is on record in Terminus—as ours is—it can be identified as soon as detected.”

Pelorat said, “It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.”

“You may be right. Sooner or later, however, we must move through hyperspace or we will be condemned to remain within a parsec or two of Terminus for the rest of our lives. We will then be unable to engage in interstellar travel to any but the slightest degree. In passing through hyperspace, on the other hand, we undergo a discountinuity in ordinary space. We pass from here to there—and I mean across a gap of hundreds of parsecs sometimes—in an instant of experienced time. We are suddenly enormously far away in a direction that is very difficult to predict and, in a practical sense, we can no longer be detected.”

“I see that. Yes.”

“Unless, of course, they have planted a hyper-relay on board. A hyper-relay sends out a signal through hyperspace—a signal characteristic of this ship—and the authorities on Terminus would know where we are at all times. That answers your question, you see. There would be nowhere in the Galaxy we could hide and no combination of Jumps through hyperspace would make it possible for us to evade their instruments.”

“But, Golan,” said Pelorat softly, “don’t we want Foundation protection?”

“Yes, Janov, but only when we ask for it. You said the advance of civilization meant the continuing restriction of privacy. —Well, I don’t want to be that advanced. I want freedom to move undetected as I wish—unless and until I want protection. So I would feel better, a great deal better, if there weren’t a hyper-relay on board.”

“Have you found one, Golan?”

“No, I have not. If I had, I might be able to render it inoperative somehow.”

“Would you know one if you saw it?”

“That’s one of the difficulties. I might not be able to recognize it. I know what a hyper-relay looks like generally and I know ways of testing a suspicious object—but this is a late-model ship, designed for special tasks. A hyper-relay may have been incorporated into its design in such a way as to show no signs of its presence.”

“On the other hand, maybe there is no hyper-relay present and that’s why you haven’t found it.”

“I don’t dare assume that and I don’t like the thought of making a Jump until I know.”

Pelorat looked enlightened. “That’s why we’ve just been drifting through space. I’ve been wondering why we haven’t Jumped. I’ve heard about Jumps, you know. Been a little nervous about it, actually—been wondering when you’d order me to strap myself in or take a pill or something like that.”

Trevize managed a smile. “No need for apprehension. These aren’t ancient times. On a ship like this, you just leave it all to the computer. You give it your instructions and it does the rest. You won’t know that anything has happened at all, except that the view of space will suddenly change. If you’ve ever seen a slide show, you’ll know what happens when one slide is suddenly projected in place of another. Well, that’s what the Jump will seem like.”

“Dear me. One won’t feel anything? Odd! I find that somewhat disappointing.”

“ I’ve never felt anything and the ships I’ve been in haven’t been as advanced as this baby of ours. —But it’s not because of the hyper-relay that we haven’t Jumped. We have to get a bit further away from Terminus—and from the sun, too. The farther we are from any massive object, the easier to control the Jump, to make re-emergence into space at exactly desired coordinates. In an emergency, you might risk a Jump when you’re only two hundred kilometers off the surface of a planet and just trust to luck that you’ll end up safely. Since there is much more safe than unsafe volume in the Galaxy, you can reasonably count on safety. Still, there’s always the possibility that random factors will cause you to reemerge within a few million kilometers of a large star or in the Galactic core—and you will find yourself fried before you can blink. The further away you are from mass, the smaller those factors and the less likely it is that anything untoward will happen.”

“In that case, I commend your caution. We’re not in a tearing hurry.”

“Exactly. —Especially since I would dearly love to find the hyper-relay before I make a move. —Or find a way of convincing myself there is no hyper-relay.”

Trevize seemed to drift off again into his private concentration and Pelorat said, raising his voice a little to surmount the preoccupation barrier, “How much longer do we have?”

“What?”

“I mean, when would you make the Jump if you had no concerns over the hyper-relay, my dear chap?”

“At our present speed and trajectory, I should say on our fourth day out. I’ll work out the proper time on the computer.”

“Well, then, you still have two days for your search. May I make a suggestion?”

“Go ahead.”

“I have always found in my own work—quite different from yours, of course, but possibly we may generalize—that zeroing in tightly on a particular problem is self-defeating. Why not relax and talk about something else, and your unconscious mind—not laboring under the weight of concentrated thought—may solve the problem for you.”